I have been helping friends get into bitcoin and hell I just wrote a guide. This is an Australian guide and updated as of December 2017

Sign up to both btcmarkets.net (Aussie exchange) and www.bittrex.com (largest exchange) These two will cover cheap bitcoin in AUD and alternative coins

Immediately start verification process for both and connect bank account for BTCMarkets. The verification process can take 1-2 weeks

Securing account

Go to BTCMarkets and enable 2FA – 2 factor authentication.

Download Google authenticator on phone

When you see the QR code DON’T SCAN IT! PRINT OUT A COPY FIRST. In fact, print two copies. One for you and one for someone you trust. Do not take photos of this code. Hide this paper somewhere safe in case you lose your phone.

20% buy ETH/AUD (ETH is the ‘operating system’ for a lot of other coins) at Best sell price

Best time to buy is right now, but better when the news isn’t talking about all time highs. You now own some crypto!

Transfer Bitcoin to Bittrex.com

Log into https://bittrex.com/Balance and look for Bitcoin under Account balances. Click on the Plus (+) symbol on the left. A pop up appears with an address and QR code. Copy the wallet addres. It’s usually a 32 character random address.

I could recommend other coins, but nobody is a believer in crypto until gains are made. These coins will definitely give some gains in this current bull market. It is then that they will investigate smaller coins if they wish.

Where I am now

1/11/2017 Moved most alts to BTC in preparation for November Segwit fork –

6/11/2017 BTC has moved up 14%. Now sitting on 3.45 BTC

STRATEGY

Just before November fork BTC will have moved up a few more percentage points – I will move all BTC into an alt or two, get a 20-30% gain right after the fork then change out, wait 30-60 minutes then change to Tether . AT this point it should be 20-50% gain in BTC.

I will then wait for BTC to drop using technical analysis and sentiment and buy back in. There is always the risk of BCH winning so this is why I am just going to tether rather than wait in BTC.

Post fork: 50% BTC to cold wallet, 25% btc and 25% Alts for trading.

I also have 1.4BCH as insurance in case of a random flippening.

For now, I am looking at past charts to see which alts show most potential (Hint: it seems the HYPED coins are the ones to go for)

What I’ve been doing – launching ICO website soon

The past 2 months I’ve been working on trying to launch a website with a friend which lists crypto ICOs and what we think is a good one going to be. The market is tough and finding out ICO prices for various established coins is proving quite time consuming. Revenue is expected to be quite small and only come from advertising. It’s a labour of love.

I’ve mostly parked my funds in BTC and some alts. However my priority is still saving a deposit for a home.

(Australian) strategy to live partially off BTC or pay bills at a discount

The only trustworthy website out there is livingroomofsatoshi.com which allows you to pay BPAY or send money to your bank account from your bitcoin or favourite coin wallet. The strategy is this

When BTC price is low, BUY BTC.

When BTC price is high, transfer BTC to a BPAY bill or your bank account for imminent bill payment.

Repeat.

This literally revolves on a constant source of fiat and recycling of BTC not to be used in alts.

If done right, you can get 5-20% discount on your fiat bills. I will need to do some figures on this but i will use it to pay my credit card bill later this month (market is rising right now in anticipation of the Oct 25 BTG fork)

I have my other portfolio, and I will be using $1000 to start a “buy the hype and sell the news strategy”.

Currently more and more people are pouring into crypto and asking what coins to buy. I will be buying coins based on pure hype and sell and dump on events. Events include

Listing on exchanges. I’ve been watching some live listings on exchanges and the price usually drops right away.. it may rise later but that is not this strategy

Renaming, rebranding. e.g. lisk. Buy during hype and when the announcement is made, sell. Long term of course I would hold but it defeats this particular purpose

ICOs. This one is tricky. e.g. If a big project is being listed that only accepts NEO. I will buy NEO 2 or 3 days beforehand, and a few hours or minutes before launch, I will sell. Because of the time it takes for confirmation. I will probably do the following:

I bought NEO (antshares) at $16, 2 months ago and sunk $1000 into it. I also bought $1000 worth of other speculative coins like Siacoin, ReddCoin, Stratis, Steem. There were the most hyped up. They went up a bit then went down, and down, and down. Neo went a bit higher.

2 months later (today

NEO is worth $3000 (at $50), while the rest plummeted to about $400. So a $2000 investment turned to $3400. Not bad. So I sold all my shares (about $8000) and have moved it to crypto.

I’m aiming for 50% stable and 50% speculative. Right now this is the breakdown

XVG – put in $970 at $0.0035. Now its $0.0026. I am hoping XVG gains traction and hits $3. This will then generate almost $1M
WAVES – Put $200 at $4.56. Now its $5.24. Long term hold.
OMG – Put in $145 at $5.64 ea. Now it’s $8.27. Another long term hold. They have a working product. I may chuck a bit more into OMG.
BNB – Put in $715 at $2.17 ea. Now it’s $1.95. This is a chinese exchange, it shows promise as they are launching ICOs on the platform but recently suffered scaling issues.
PAY – Put in $958.44 at $4.30 ea. Now it’s $3.58. Aka TenX. Bought this on hype. They have a working card however has not reached critical mass.
BQX – Put in $739 at $1.24. Now it’s $0.928. Bought on hype. They aim to make a universal wallet. However lots of others are doing the same. BQX are close to releasing though.
DNT – Put in $382 at $0.15. Now it’s $0.16. aka District0x – Big ambitions and I bought at peak during hype. Another rookie mistake. We will see how this goes. It’s only a few hundred.

Portfolio value 27th August 2018 – $7449 or $1.69 BTC.

As you can see, I will need to funnel more money into stable coins. NEO profits have covered my losses in the speculatives. It is highly likely all speculative coins will end up being ‘bags’. OMG seems most stable. We are going for the Pareto principle where 20% of stock will give 80% of gains.